Long Summer Day (8 page)

The scene in Low Coombe that morning was akin to the scurry in a Highland glen after word had arrived that redcoats were arriving to search for arms and Jacobites. At first there was a wave of panic, showing itself in wildly disordered attempts to clear away litter, strip the clothes-line and shore up tottering walls but the Potters could never engage in sustained activity and after half-an-hour’s running here and there Old Tamer called a conference round the pump, pointing out that perhaps, in the circumstances, it would be more profitable to advertise extreme poverty, rather than create an impression that the Potters were sober, industrious farmers. Rudd, the agent, would never be taken in by a last-minute spit-and-polish whereas the new squire (the Potters, one and all, already thought of Paul as such) should be given no excuse for thinking the family was self-sufficient and could survive without a reduction of rent and perhaps a loan of draught animals from the Home Farm.

‘Us’ll get nowt if us makes out us needs nowt!’ Tamer reasoned, ‘zo us might as well let un zee us is down to our last varden!’, and the family, standing in a semi-circle in the nettles, sanctioned this realistic approach with enthusiastic nods and grunts before dispersing to their various occupations, nine-year-old Hazel having been posted half-way up the cart-track to give immediate warning of the approach of the visitors.

She came flying down the path in less than ten minutes, shrieking the news that Rudd and New Squire were on their way and Cissie, the eldest girl, cuffed her for making such an outcry, whereupon Hazel kicked her sister in the buttocks as she bent to replenish the fire and then fled to the safety of the oak which she climbed with the speed of a chimpanzee until she could look down on the dell from a height of some fifty feet. Meanwhile, all older Potters adopted expressions of deep humility, and the postures of absorbed artisans, Mother Meg at the huge washtub, Sam at the woodpile, the three elder girls at the osier frames and Tamer presiding over the tribe from the porch steps, his patriarchal belly clasped in his hands. Only Smut, the rebel of the tribe, continued what he was doing, skinning a rabbit taken from the Gilroy warrens across the Teazel in the small hours. Smut, twenty now, and as muscled as a professional wrestler, made no compromises with the enemy. His was a war without truce.

Half-a-mile or so higher up the Bluff, where the ascent flattened out to form a tiny valley east of the Coombe, Edwin Willoughby of Deepdene had also received warning of the inspection, for the Potters were on affectionate terms with Willoughby, a Christian who took the Sermon on the Mount literally. Willoughby was a Methodist lay-preacher, as well as a farmer, but his God tested him sorely. On the one hand he had, willy-nilly, to live with the Potters, and north of his border lived the dour Edward Derwent, who abominated the gypsy family. Thus Willoughby’s land, a poor and stubborn two hundred acres, was a no-mans-land between two hostile clans and Edwin enjoyed little of the forebearance he preached each Sunday in one or other of the little tin chapels along the coast. He persisted, however, for he had experienced worse in the lifetime of his wife, Ada, now at rest in the Coombe Bay Methodist burial ground. There were many in and about the Sorrel Valley who declared that Edwin’s devotion to the Almighty stemmed from His mercy in removing Ada in the fifteenth year of their marriage, for it was generally admitted that she had tormented her husband with tongue by day and loins by night and for good measure occasionally let fly at him with a saucepan or flat-iron. Since her death he had grown to look rather like a saint, with his long silky hair, white as hoar frost, high, pale forehead, and mild, deepset eyes that burned with love for all mankind, even such wayward sons as Tamer Potter and his crusty neighbour, Derwent. His sermons, although spiced with the traditional touch of brimstone, expressed his deep belief in an era when lions would lie down with lambs, and reformed Potters would hoe harmoniously alongside Derwents. He was fortified in his faith by the example of his sister Mary, who had made her home with him after his wife’s death and now divided her time between keeping Deepdene farmhouse spotless and presiding over a small school for Valley children too young to travel to the nearest elementary school, at Whinmouth, or the Church School, in Coombe Bay. All the children of the surrounding country had been Mary’s pupils and among the present generation were Codsalls, of Four Winds, Derwents, of High Coombe, and Honeymans, from the Home Farm. Mary Willoughby was a sweet-faced woman, several years older than Edwin and had been mother to Edwin’s children, Francis and Elinor, both of whom helped to run the little farm.

News of The Prospect’s tour was leaked across the hedge to Edwin by Smut Potter but the Willoughbys had no need to prepare against the arrival of a new squire. Their land was poor but their buildings and outbuildings were in good trim and their livestock a credit to the hardworking Edwin and his prudent eighteen-year-old daughter, Elinor, who was responsible for the poultry. Edwin thought it wise, however, to tramp back to the farm where his sister was reading
Alice in Wonderland
to the children and inform her of the visit of a new master of Shallowford but all Mary exclaimed was, ‘There now, I do hope he’ll zettle an be happy yer,’ and went on reading of the Cheshire Cat, while Edwin crossed the Deepdene fields to see how his modest barley crop was coming along and pass the news to one of Farmer Derwent’s labourers, hard at work diverting a small stream that ran along the Deepdene-High Coombe boundary into a shallow trench inside the Derwent holding. The man was rather outfaced to see Edwin’s saintly face loom over the hedge but he need not have been. Edwin saw what he was about and offered him the loan of a larger spade.

Edward Derwent, his big son Hugh, and his two daughters, Rose and Claire, discussed the news over their breakfast after they had finished an early morning stint in fields east of the farm and in the stables, where the girls had their riding school. Neither husband nor children addressed a word to the second Mrs Derwent, a nonentity at High Coombe who was not included in family councils. Hugh, broad and swarthy like his father, dismissed the news as a Potter-inspired rumour.

‘No one with money to burn would buy this white elephant,’ he declared, ‘he could do better up country if he was looking for land. Big House is leaking bad, I hear, and apart from us, the Codsalls and the Pitts, what of us got to offer but flint, dirt farmers and a tangle of woods? It’s probably nowt but a swell from London after some o’ they antiques upalong.’ Whereupon he wolfed his rashers and three eggs with the despatch of a man who has been forking hay since first light, and at once returned to the fields.

The two girls, Rose and Claire, were far more intrigued.

‘Gregory had it from Mr Willoughby that Mr Craddock is an army officer wounded in the war,’ Rose said. ‘I wonder if he’s married, and if so what his wife can be thinking of to bury herself down here?’

Edward Derwent, always inclined to speak scornfully of the estate, was not prepared to extend the same privilege to his children. He was a powerful, dark-jowled man, with bushy black brows that met over a strong nose in a broad ‘V’ and gave him an expression of permanent irritation.

‘Why the devil does everyone here talk as if we lived in a desert?’ he demanded aggressively, and his wife lowered her gaze penitently as though she too had erred in this respect. ‘We’ve done pretty well here, haven’t we?’ Claire, the pretty daughter, giggled. As her father’s favourite this called for no reproof so he continued, rumblingly, ‘White elephant! Flint and woodland! A backwater! What kind of talk is that? There’s nothing wrong with my land and if the riding stable books are to be believed we’re showing a good profit on liveries, so why all this belittling of the place?’

Rose and Claire were well accustomed to their father’s rhetorical questions and paid them no attention at all but continued to speculate on the possibilities of the new man’s patronage.

‘If he’s a cavalry officer he’ll be sure to hunt,’ Rose said, ‘and if he’s wealthy enough to buy Shallowford he’ll probably keep a second hunter, carriage horses and at least one hack!’

‘He might even have a motor,’ suggested Claire but not seriously, for the lunatic improbability of this made Rose laugh aloud and even their stepmother gave a nervous little smile. Nobody in the Sorrel Valley had ever seen a motor, except in the illustrated magazines. The new King was said to own one but the Derwents thought it a clownish substitute for the royal coach.

The girls went on gossiping about a possible successor to the Lovells after they had returned to the yard to muck out and clean tack. Rose, big boned and freckled, confined herself to the more practical aspects of the situation—whether the new man was likely to prove as reckless a rider to hounds as the late Ralph Lovell, who had ridden horses to death and broken limbs in the process, but her sister, fair-haired and soft-mouthed, with dimples in place of her sister’s rash of freckles, continued to harp on the possibility of the new squire being a bachelor. She had read and enjoyed
Jane Eyre,
and the prospect of a Mr Rochester at large in the Valley offered all kinds of possibilities. They were still speculating when the hired man, Gregory, stumped into the yard and confirmed the presence of Agent Rudd and his ‘Lunnon gent, in Yeomanry togs.’

‘’Er’s down wi’ the Potters now, Misses,’ he said ‘an’ they ole varmints’ll be in a proper ole flummox, if I knaws aught about it!’

The embarrassment of the Potter clan was wishful thinking on Gregory’s part. As a Derwent employee he naturally embraced Derwent politics, nurturing a dutiful hate for his master’s principal enemies. The truth was, however, very different for Old Tamer and his family had played fish like Paul Craddock far too long to lose the advantage of an hour’s warning of the approach. Rudd and Craddock rode into the Coombe about nine o’clock and Paul was impressed by the scene of virtuous industry in the Dell. All the Potters except Smut genuflected and Tamer went so far as to reach for a forelock that was not there.

‘Well, you damned rascals,’ Rudd said jovially, ‘you’ll have to stir your lazy stumps round here! Mr Craddock is considering buying Shallowford.
Considering,
mind you! Don’t broadcast it up and down the Valley. God help me,’ he went on aloud, glancing round the Dell, ‘did you ever see people make such a tip of a place? Look at that yard, and those outbuildings?’

Tamer simpered and rubbed his hands, as though overjoyed to hear the agent enjoy a harmless jest at his family’s expense, but inwardly Paul was obliged to agree, for what with the washing, the forest of nettles, empty tins and broken boxes, a smouldering ashtip, and the presence of a saddleback pig rooting under the trees, the natural beauty of the green basin was grotesquely camouflaged. As far as Paul could see the Potters were not farmers at all but down-at-heel vagrants, living on their wits. The two things that did impress him, however, was the heroic industry of Meg at the washtub, and the shining health of the three girls, weaving baskets beside the fire. He did not see Hazel Potter, perched forty feet above his head but she saw him and tried, unsuccessfully, to hit him with an acorn. She was lying full length on a great limb of the oak, her mop of hair swinging free, her face pressed close to the bark, and as she looked down on the group she composed one of her secret prose poems about the newcomer, singing it softly under her breath and exulting in the fecundity of her imagination.

‘He’ll be tall and thin, like a birch in winter,’ she sang, ‘and the silvery bits on his soldier’s clothes look like the birch bark I can peel in strips …’ but then the new squire dismounted stiffly, and so did Mr Rudd, and they all moved out of her range of vision so that she forgot them and turned her attention to the tiny brown stains oozed from the crown of the uncupped acorn in the palm of her hand. Hazel Potter was even less trammelled by the demands of duty and industry than her sisters. Some said she was short of wits, and this had kept her from attending school but others declared she had inherited her mother’s powers of witchcraft and were careful to give her skimmed milk or a halfpenny when they heard her crooning to herself at their doors.

With Tamer as guide, and Sam bringing up the rear, Rudd and Paul were shown around the holding. Hens fled squawking at their approach, for a sudden turn of speed was a condition of survival to all birds and animals in the Potter farmyard. As they poked about among the sheds and litter Tamer maintained a running commentary of the difficulties of life at Low Coombe and Rudd, who cherished for him the amused tolerance law-abiding citizens show the picturesque burglar, let him whine to his heart’s content.

‘Us needs all manner o’ things to maake a praper start yer-abouts,’ Tamer explained, as they entered a stable half-full of rubbish and containing no beast of any kind. ‘You’ll mind, Maister, that the military commandeered the ole mare us ’ad and ’er ’ve never been replaaced, so as us must needs do our own haulin’ from the shore.’

‘They use seaweed for manure on the Coombe farms,’ Rudd told Paul, ‘and most of our horses were bought up by the Army, in the first year of the war. I’ve made a note of this kind of thing so you needn’t bother to memorise it all, I just want you to get a general impression.’

‘Be’ee reely going to taake Squire Lovell’s place, Maister?’ Sam Potter asked reverently, but Paul said, ‘I really don’t know, it’s too early to say but I’d prefer you didn’t discuss it outside the estate.’

He said this earnestly but he was already enjoying the sensation his presence had occasioned in the Valley. From the moment he had opened his eyes that morning, and looked over the ford to the long downslope to the sea, he had been uplifted by an elation that had eluded him since childhood and this was not caused by the novelty of the occasion or even by the beauty of Shallowford’s southern vista but by a feeling akin to that of home-coming to a place and people who seemed, in some improbable way, to need and want him. He looked over the golden vista basking in slanting sunlight, noting the steep hedgerows and their riot of colour, and inhaling the scent of the baked, red earth, spiced with the whiff of the sea. He warmed to the soft burr of the Devon accent and the sharp hiss of indrawn breath that men like Tamer Potter used as an expression of assent, but buried deeper than this, glowing like a small, bright coal, was the memory of Grace Lovell and her pale, shining skin and he wondered if the tour would take them through the village of Coombe Bay, where he might see her again, although he was careful to say nothing of this to Rudd.